How to create a variable newsletter template?

Hi ​@kingbxby:

I saw your post yesterday elsewhere and started to compose a response but was pulled away before I could finish. To me, if you want to continue to use InDesign, the short answer is education/training.

     Educating management about the perils of letting an untrained InDesign user loose on your template, and training those who will be doing the writing/editing on InDesign. 

     I disagreed with the “InCopy is a little janky” comment: I think InCopy might be worth looking into but it will work best if:

• You get up and running on the InDesign/InCopy workflow (a few hours),
• Your writer/editors get up and running on using InCopy (a few more hours),
• You speak with management about limiting the layout flexibility of the issues as the variable copy length could be an issue in this workflow, and 
• You understand that the InDesign document will still need your attention before it is ready for distribution. It won’t be the template is done so I’m done situation. You will still need to review the layout and make adjustments after the files are checked in.

You’ve been offered lots of alternative workflows, all worth consideration. But you also have free access to InCopy so if it is still on the table, you might download it and play with it. There are some great resources on LinkedIn Learning (in particular, from Anne-Marie Concepcion) and here is a link to her white paper: https://creativepro.com/incopy-cs5-workflow-white-paper-now-available/. Yes, she wrote it a long time ago (2010) but she updated it in 2021, and the workflow is still the about the same so it offers a good overview at no cost, other than the time to read it.

Have a look at Adobe Express, there might be a way of setting up a template that people with the application could contribute, then you could distribute it as a PDF.

You may want to look into Adobe InCopy as your tool to link content writers with your InDesign template file(s). InCopy lets your content writers “check out” content on the template to fill with their articles, offers estimates for how much copy can be fitted into the template and offers document management/approval tracks which will make monitoring progress much easier than doing it manually and alone.

You can learn more about what InCopy does, and what it can do for you, by clicking on the following link.

https://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html

Be sure to click on the follow-on links too, as they provide more information for using InCopy for workflows like the one you’re describing for your newsletter templates.

Hope this helps,

Randy